Absinthe BooksFain has inherited Ocean View, a boarding house in Hove Harbour from her late mother, who’s still hanging around to offer advice where needed and generally keep an eye on the place – when magic of a different sort starts to rear its head within her home, Fain, her mother and friends old and new must band together to protect Ocean View, and each other.
For the last 20 something years Mike Carey has been a pretty constant presence on my reading pile, from his run on the 'Sandman' spin-off comic 'Lucifer' through the occult detective stories of the 'John Constantine Hellblazer' comic and his own 'Felix Castor' novels to the mushroom zombies of 'The Girl With All The Gifts' and beyond to 'The Books of Koli' he's produced a succession of imaginative wonders that have traversed Heavens, Hells, pasts, futures, elsewheres and other heres.
In this novella for the PS Publishing imprint Absinthe Books Carey takes us to a provincial guest house called Ocean View that's populated by owner Fain, the jar that holds her mother's cremated remains, a closed and sealed off magical night club and an assorted cast of gentle eccentrics and, one night, someone or, perhaps, something, other, that takes up residence and begins offering the residents the fulfillment of their deepest wishes. We are told little of the world beyond Ocean View but we know it's one where magic holds a place in society and where it's policed aggressively and so the arrival of this new resident brings Fain and her friends into conflict with the authorities.
As a touch point Carey's urban fantasy has echoes of Neil Gaiman's 'Coraline' and 'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' but there's always been a kinship between the two author's work going back to "Lucifer' which the story here is most redolent of both in concept and in execution, the vividly visual nature of the storytelling leaving you with the feeling of having read a comic book more than prose. Carey has long shown himself to be the consummate world builder and storyteller and proves it again here as with the briefest of strokes in the limited page count open to him he weaves a story of family and of love and creates a world that I'd be happy to revisit again anytime soon.
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